God & Monsters... Considering James Whale On His 122nd Birthday

I have done several posts about my admiration for one of my all time favorite films, Bill Condon’s film- Gods & Monsters & Sir Ian McKellen’s masterful performance as director James Wale. Thinking of James Wale this morning on his birthday, I landed on the moment when McKellen's James Whale murmurs about the hunky Brendan Frasier’s "architectural skull." Who else could appreciate a skull more than the man who designed the impressive & imposing head of the Frankenstein monster?

"It's the horror movies you'll be remembered for" the geeky fan/ interviewer tells the aging Whale in the film, & despite his gentlemanly manners, you can see irritation in McKellen's eyes. But, the geek is correct of course. Whale's other movies, even his successful version of the musical- Show Boat are mostly forgotten in the 21st century, but people still watch Frankenstein & The Bride of Frankenstein. The look of the monster: square head, seams, scars & neck bolts is a visual icon of the 20th century.

James Whale was a painter before he was a stage & film director, & his eye for design is part of what makes his films so memorable. Besides the look of the monster, played by Boris Karloff, he also created the hairstyle & elegantly stitched scars of the Bride played by Elsa Lanchester. Whale had seen the great German silent horror movies that were never widely released in the USA, & from them he took the starkly dramatic lighting & impressionistic sets, & along with his art director Charles Hall, created the style of Universal Studios Gothic: huge shadowed interiors with enormous doors, imposing staircases & long shadows.

Gods & Monsters asks us to consider that a major influence on Whale's work was his time in the trenches in WW1. The film uses flashbacks of a foxhole lover to provide Whale with awful memories of the young lover’s death. But the war really did the same for the actual Whale. He was in the thick of some intense battles, before ending up in a POW camp, where he began his stage career by producing amateur theatricals.

There is a beauty, perversity, & wit in Whale's Frankenstein films. His dark, horrid, funny work paved the way for directors like Brian De Palma, David Lynch, George A. Romero & Tim Burton.

Whale was an uncloseted gay man in Hollywood during the1930s. While Gods & Monsters is fiction, his real last lover was a gas station operator who for a while had to share Whale with a male nurse. I have read that the Frankenstein films were a way for Whale to give a coded guide to his sexuality & his feelings of being a misunderstood outsider, a lonely monster. Gods & Monsters evokes this with an understanding & even elegance. But, Whale's longtime partner, David Lewis stated: "Jimmy was first & foremost an artist, his films represent the work of an artist, not a gay artist, but an artist." Whale may have identified with the monster not because of his sexuality, but because of his background as a member of a lower class in England.


Whale directed the 1928 play Journey's End on London’s West End & then on Broadway . He moved to Hollywood to direct the film version & lived there for the rest of his life, most of that time with his longtime companion, David Lewis, the prodicer of films such as Dark Victory & Raintree County. They were a couple for 22+ years.

He will always be remembered most for his work in the horror film genre: Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) & Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but Whale directed many films in other genres, including what is considered the definitive film version of the musical Show Boat (1936). He became increasingly disenchanted with his association with horror & never returned to the genre.
 

Having experienced WW1 first hand, Whale seemed an inspired choice to direct The Road Back, a sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front in 1937, but the film was a critical & commercial failure. A string of more failures followed & by 1941 his film directing career was over. Whale continued to direct for the stage & also rediscovered his love for painting. He had invested wisely & he lived a comfortable life until suffering several strokes in 1956 left him in pain. Whale committed suicide on 29 May 1957 by drowning himself in his backyard swimming pool. His former partner- David Lewis would later reveal the details of Whale's suicide note.

There is a terrific chapter on Gods & Monsters in Christopher Bram's (the author of the novel) memoir- Mapping The Territory. I recommend this very entertaining & emotional book to anyone that is interested in the process of writing.

Born On This Day- July 14th... Arthur Laurents

Arthur Laurents: "Writers are the chosen people. I am happiest when sitting alone & putting my daydreams & fantasies down on paper.”

As the story goes... late for his place on a panel discussion, Arthur Laurents burst on to the stage draped in mink & announced: "behold, a living legend!". Stephen Sondheim, also on the panel, looked up & said: "wrong on both counts".

I just ate up his memoirs- Original Story By & Mainly On Directing which were chock full of great dishy theatre & Hollywood stories. He is important to me in the many ways. I admire him & his work, but most especially because he wrote the book for my favorite musical- Gypsy!, which I find to be a near perfect piece of theatre. He directed 3 rivals of Gypsy! including my favorite version with my good close personal friend Angela Lansbury in 1974, &Tyne Daley revival in 1989 & the recent Patti Lupone outing.

In 2010, at 92, he directed a revival of West Side Story, a classic for which he wrote the original lean & strong book. In this production, it was Laurents's conceit to have most of the the Sharks & their girls, who are from Puerto Rico, speak & sing in Spanish & the cast would all be young & if not Puerto Rican, at least Hispanic. Laurents has explained that the idea came from his partner of 52 years- Tom Hatcher (Laurents & Farley Granger were lovers in the late 1940s), who saw & loved a production of the musical in South America. It was also Hatcher that urged Laurents to revive Gypsy! with Patti Lupone, so that the Sam Mendes directed production with Bernadette Peters would not be the last Gypsy! in Laurents's lifetime.

Laurents has won 4 Tony Awards & been nominated for 6 Oscars, winning for the screenplay of The Turning Point. He was by all accounts, a real son of a bitch... but, what a talent.

His career had barely started when he was drafted into the Army in 1941. Laurents spent the war years writing training films & radio propaganda shows.

He had also had come to terms with his homosexuality & soon lost count of the sexual experiences he had while in the Army. In Original Story By, he speaks of his lifetime of gay encounters, referring to his partners as “those unremembered hundreds.” As a gay man living as openly as possible during some of this country's most dangerous times, Laurents was a role model of discretion & living the way he wanted to, despite public opinion & cruelty against homosexuals everywhere.

The last line of Laurents's memoir- Original Story By, speaks of Tom Hatcher, who was Laurents' partner for more than 50 years: "As long as he lives, I will." But Hatcher died in 2006  & Laurents, in his 93rd year, adjusting to life without him. When they first became a couple, Laurents claims his mother was more disturbed that Hatcher was a gentile than that her son was gay.

Laurents led a wild life: "I drank an awful lot, I drugged an awful lot. But I think I have a built-in governor, because at any point I would say OK, I've had enough, & I'd go home to bed. I assumed everybody could do that. I was never one for going to bars, that kind of thing. I was a hopeless romantic. Well, no one could have that much sex & be entirely romantic, but the dangerous side never appealed to me."

But Hatcher was the great love of his life & their life together is one of the great love affairs.  From Laurents' memoirs:"Tom & theatre, that's what my life has been. & that's what my book is - an effort to say thank you by doing what I can to make the theatre indestructible & to keep Tom alive."

"From Tom's pool, you can see into the heart of his garden. In summer, we swim laps every day. Often, we walk through the park, then sit on that bench, looking at the view. Yesterday, we sat there a little longer than usual, just looking at the changing light, not saying anything. But Tom reads my mind: 'You're going to live 20 more years,' he assured me."


Laurents worked in many genres. The stage was his first love, & he wrote for it for 65 years, creating comedies, romances, & serious dramas that explored questions of ethics, social pressures & personal integrity.
 
 

 

Laurents made his exit, upstage center, in May of this year.

Librettos: Gypsy, Nick & Nora, West Side Story, The Madwoman of Central Park West, Hallelujah, Baby! Do I Hear a Waltz?, & Anyone Can Whistle

Direction: Anyone Can Whistle, La Cage aux Follies, The Madwoman of Central Park West, Gypsy (1974, 1989 & 2008), I Can Get It for You Wholesale (with a very young Barbra Streisand) & Invitation to a March


Plays: Invitation to a March, A Clearing in the Woods, The Time of the Cuckoo, The Bird Cage, Home of the Brave, & Jolson Sings!


Screenplays: Anastasia, The Turning Point, The Way We Were, Gypsy, West Side Story, Bonjour Tristesse, Summertime (from his play "The Time of the Cuckoo"), Anna Lucasta, Home of the Brave, Rope, Caught, & The Snake Pit

Has your life been touched by any of his work? I would be interested to know.
If you are a fan, what is your favorite version of Gypsy!?





It gets me every time...This is a partial list of Arthur Laurents's contribution to popular culture:

Born On This Day- July 11th... Dreamboat Tab Hunter

Arthur Andrew Kelm Gelien was an equestrian & figure skater before his agent, Henry Wilson turned him into Tab Hunter (the same agent that came up with the name Rock Hudson). Tab Hunter has appeared in over 40 films & has worked on stage & television. I find his best role to be Joe Hardy in the1958 film version of Damn Yankees. He was the only one in the film version who had not been in the original Broadway cast.

In the year of my birth-1954, Hunter, then 23, blond & blue eyed, the perfect product of a popular perceptibility, as free from cynicism & care as a sky can be cloudless & clear, was #1 at the box office with the film- Battle Cry. By 1957 he was also #1 on the pop charts with Young Love, topping Elvis Presley.

By 1959 his ride was ending. Troy Donahue was invented & he became the next Tab Hunter, & Hunter at 28 was more or less done. Hunter began a 46 year descent into actor hell: spaghetti westerns (Hunter describes them as - "short on the meat sauce"), TV guest shots, dinner theater, infomercial, & Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood.

Then, in the 1980s, after the long trip through drek & a heart attack, Hunter was rediscovered by John Waters. In Polyester (1981), Waters used Hunter, who had starred opposite John Wayne as well as Natalie Wood, Sophia Loren & a bevy of beauties, to play opposite Divine as Francine Fishpaw. Polyester reinvented Hunter as an ironic illustration of his own Hollywood iconography.

Hunter said Hollywood in the 1950s had its version of "Don't ask, don't tell": "Don't complain, don't explain." Let the studio take care of the actors, & let the public draw its conclusions.

Hunter: "Hollywood will just take you, chew you up, spit you out, dump you on the side & go on to the next, & it's kind of tragic."In 2005, Hunter released his terrific & very readable biography- Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star where he finally publicly came out. Hunter: "life was difficult for me, because I was living two lives at that time. A private life of my own, which I never discussed, never talked about to anyone. Then my Hollywood life, which was just trying to learn my craft and succeed..." the word 'gay' wasn't even around in those days, & if anyone ever confronted me with it, I'd just kinda freak out. I was in total denial. I was just not comfortable in that Hollywood scene, other than the work process.There was a lot written about my sexuality, & the press was pretty darn cruel."

Hunter had long term relationships with actor Anthony Perkins & champion figure skater Ronnie Robertson before settling down with his partner of 29 years, Allan Glaser, a producer 25 years. The pair live in Montecito, California.

He was one of my first crushes. I think Tab Hunter was & is a blond bombshell. I don't hate his being a Republican, but I do hate his Republicanism.

Born On This Day- July 7th... George Cukor

I just am crazy for the scene in one of my favorite films- Gods & Monsters: director James Whale brings his hot gardener stud to a party at George Cukor's home, with Princess Margaret as a honored guest. So well filmed & telling, director Bill Condon claims he shot the budget wad on that scene, but it was worth it.

George Cukor's private life was well known in Hollywood. His Sunday afternoon pool parties were legendary in gay circles, having been described at lurid detail by some of the party guests, including writer John Rechy. His home, decorated by actor-turned interior designer William Haines, was the spot for Hollywood homosexuals to gather. The close knit group included Haines & his partner Jimmie Shields, Alan Ladd ,W.Somerset Maugham, James Vincent, screenwriter Rowland Leigh, costume designers Orry-Kelly & Robert Le Maire, & actors John Darrow, Robert Walker, Anderson Lawler, Robert Seiter & Tom Douglas. Frank Horn- secretary to Cary Grant, was a frequent guest. Cukor & his sophisticated & artistic friends socialized with their boyfriends- often hustlers, rough trade, actor wannabes, or ambitious artists & writers who saw his parties as way into the exclusive Hollywood life.

My favorite anecdote: Hunky, young Forrest Tucker, who was straight, would show up at Cukor's Sunday afternoon parties & swim naked in the pool for the viewing pleasure of Cukor's famous gay guests: W. Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward, Cecil Beaton & other assorted influential gays in the art, literature, & movies. Tucker realized these men were important contacts & was one of many up & coming young studs who were willing to make a naked appearance for the sake of their careers. Among them was handsome, hunk, hairy Aldo Ray, whom Cukor seemed to like well enough to cast him in Pat & Mike & The Marrying Kind with Judy Holliday.


Cukor's personal reputation has suffered somewhat from these anecdotes. Rechy: “Cukor was a catty, sometimes cruel queen who was as gifted at separating his private & public personas as he was at making films.” Yet among his close friends, those important enough to him to have his home filled with their photographs: Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Joan Crawford, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Lauren Bacall & Humphrey Bogart, Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich, Laurence Olivier & Vivien Leigh, Stanley Holloway, Judy Garland, Gene Tierney, Noël Coward, Cole Porter, James Whale, Edith Head, Norma Shearer, Irving Thalberg, Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, Aldous Huxley, Ferenc Molnár, Christopher Isherwood & Don Bachardy, & close friend Somerset Maugham.

As a semi-closeted gay artist in Hollywood, one of Cukor's constant themes was how to reconcile a double life, an outsider or artist always at war with his or her own demons & the limits imposed by relationships & society. In other films, there is the meeting of 2 sides. For Cukor this seemed to represent true happiness. In Holiday (1938), Cary Grant rejects his rich, stuffy fiancee in favor of her spinster sister (Katharine Hepburn) who turns out to be a dreamer like himself.


Cukor is often given the title. “women’s director”, but he was the 1st to show Cary Grant as a romantic comedian in Sylvia Scarlett, & he launched the careers of Jack Lemmon, Aldo Ray, Tom Ewell & Anthony Perkins as well as Katharine Hepburn & Angela Lansbury. He directed W. C. Fields, Lew Ayres, Spencer Tracy & James Mason to performances that should have won Oscars, & James Stewart, Ronald Colman & Rex Harrison to performances that did. Plus: Max Carey in What Price Hollywood?, John Barrymore in Dinner at Eight, Cary Grant in Holiday & The Philadelphia Story, Ronald Colman in A Double Life, Spencer Tracy in Adam's Rib, & Laurence Olivier in Love Among the Ruins. All these actors discovered new dimensions to their screen personalities under Cukor's smart, shrewd & sympathetic direction.

Photo by Cecil Beaton

Among his most personal films are Little Women, The Marrying Kind, Pat & Mike & A Star Is Born. None of them is glossy, & none of them started as theatre. Cukor usually filmed from the viewpoint of his female main character. This is evident in his Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy romantic comedy Pat & Mike & as it is in more obviously female-centered stories such as Little Women, & Gaslight . His concentration on Strong women, along with Clark Gable's "ick factor"over Cukor's homosexuality, were the reasons for the director's firing from Gone With the Wind by producer David O. Selznick.


All of his life Cukor fought an inferiority complex based on his ugliness, weight & life in an anti-Semitic America. His biggest secret was his active homosexuality. Among the major directors of the golden years of Hollywood, only he & James Whale were, more or less. basically openly gay. He died in 1983, 2 years after his last film- Rich & Famous. He is buried in an unmarked grave at Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery.

My favorite Cukor Film: Philadelphia Story. My Favorite Cukor moment: Cary Grant's speech on kindness to haughty Katherine Hepburn as haughty Tracy Lord.

What is your favorite Cukor moment? I really want to know.

Born On This Day- July 5th... Over Achiever- Jean Cocteau

My husband is a hyphenate (most people in Portland are), as an artist-designer-set designer, but he is a bit of an underachiever, compared with poet-artist-playwright-actor-designer-photographer-filmmaker-boxing manager- Jean Cocteau. Cocteau published his 1st volume of poems when he was 19. He was a well regarded artist & popular man-about-town in Paris, with the success of several ballets & plays that he wrote in his late 20s. In the early 1920s, Cocteau's lover, writer Raymond Radiguet, died of typhoid fever; the despondent Cocteau escaped the pain of his loss with the help of opium. In 1930, Cocteau tried film making as the medium best suited for his artistic expression. His stylized, homoerotic films are taken from Cocteau's drawings: bold, simple strokes, accentuated eyes, minimalist outlines & profiles, & erotic, surrealistic portraits that dominate the sets of his films. In his later films, Cocteau included bits of his poetry written in his distinctive handwriting, samples of his drawings & paintings, narration, & cast himself in certain roles.

Cocteau’s work is marked by whimsical special effects & exotic landscapes & themes of narcissism, the Orpheus myth, mirrors, passages to secret worlds, fairy tales, flowers, & beautiful people in iconographic settings. In 1937, Cocteau met Jean Marais, the most famous of his lovers, & helped make his talented, handsome, & athletic protégé into one of France's most beloved movie stars. Cocteau made with Marais, such classics films as La belle et la bête & Orphée.

Cocteau by Modigliani

Cocteau encouraged artists to speak out against unjust political domination, & yet he was burdened by the open secrets of his opium use & homosexuality, which made him particularly vulnerable to attack by the right-wing government. During the Nazi Occupation, Cocteau's plays were banned & Cocteau was a victim of physical violence & homophobic insults. But still, Cocteau wrote, made films, traveled, & attracted famous friends, patrons, & protégés throughout the rest of his life. Cocteau was elected to the prestigious Académie Français. The artist died of a heart attack in 1963, just an hour after learning of singer Édith Piaf's death. He wrote more than 30 volumes of poetry, 7 novels, 24 plays, 11 ballets, 6 operas, 6 full length films, & 100s of drawings & photographs. He contributed to the worlds of publishing, graphic design, clothing design, & interior design. Jean Cocteau continues to this day as one of France's most famous, & most adored, cultural icons. A fascinating gay man of the 20th century. How about Adrien Brody in the title role of the film of his life story?

Born On This Day- June 15th... Simon Callow

He is not Simon Cowell or Stephen Fry. Top drawer character actor of stage & screen, writer & director- Simon Callow is in a large percent of my top favorite films: Amadeus (he was the original Mozart in the play’s stage premier), A Room With A View, Maurice, Howard’s End, Shakespeare In Love, Notting Hill, Angels In America, 4 Weddings & a Funeral . Along with Ian McKellen, Callow is an out gay actor who has successfully made the transition from respected theatre actor to film star. Callow is also prolific writer: 2 volumes of memoirs, 3 volumes of the biography of Orson Welles, Charles Laughton, & Oscar Wilde.

Gay films are few, & most films featuring gay people are “important” films like Philadelphia or Brokeback Mountain, sad & stately affairs, with no true specifically gay sensibility. I tend to like the films with less agenda & where gays are part of the world at large. Callow has a role in what I find to be one of the most important gay themed films- 4 Weddings & a Funeral.  Callow plays Gareth, flamboyant but not camp; he doesn’t fit any stereotype; & he dos not die of AIDS, which during that era was ravaging the gay community. Gareth dies of Scottish dancing.

Callow: “When I read the script, it was immediately evident that this was a new kind of a gay character in films: not sensitive, not intuitive, kind & somehow deeply sad, nor hilarious, bitchy & outrageous, but masculine, exuberant, occasionally offensive, generous & passionate. He was also deeply involved with his partner, the handsome, shy, witty, understated Matthew. In the original screenplay, they were glimpsed at the beginning of the film asleep in bed. In the final cut, the film-makers removed this sequence, in order to allow their relationship to creep up on the audience. They were right to do so: before they knew it, viewers had come to know & love them individually, & were hit hard, first by Gareth's death, then by Matthew's oration ('with a little help from another splendid bugger, WH Auden').”

Callow turns 62 years old today. He is single & lives in London. He will always be Mr. Beeb in A Room With A View to me. Callow is certainly an actor who is more than the sum of his parts.

Born On This Day- June 10th.. Francis Ethel Gumm

How can I come up with a gay connection to Judy Garland? Lets see… her father was gay, 2 of her husbands were gay, the man she hand picked as a husband for her daughter was gay, her gay fans remained her most steadfast fans through the drugs & the booze ups & downs, the fruit of her loins was Liza Minnelli & then there is that little film- The Wizard Of Oz.

42 years after her death, Judy Garland remains the very definition of gay icon. Her failed relationships, her self-doubt, & her battle with substance abuse are aspects of a life that most of us can identify with, while her live performances reflect a truth & freedom that are desired by anyone that has wasted time hiding their own emotions.

Gay culture can't escape Garland's influence. The Stonewall riots have been attributed to the anger & grief felt on Garland's funeral that day. The term- "Friend of Dorothy," is from our identification with Garland's most famous role.

Garland's 1961 concert at Carnegie Hall is a landmark in Show Biz. 2 years earlier, she had been advised to retire from performing after being diagnosed with hepatitis, but instead she took on a series of concerts in Europe & the USA that reestablished her reputation as the top entertainer of all time. The Carnegie Hall show is regarded as the greatest evening in show-business history. The live recording of that concert spent more than a year on the Billboard charts & won 7 Grammys, including Album of the Year.

Last year, my dear friend- WCK3 & I stayed up late into the night watching CDs of her TV show from the early 1960s. I was entranced by her presence & horrified by the histrionics. Sometimes when listening to her recordings, I am off put by the feeling that she sings every single song as if it were her last. Her over the top interpretations of the great standards push me away. But, then I hear her original version or her late in life version of Over The Rainbow & I end up crying. Judy Garland loved her fans & they loved her back. I love her for that.

Born On This Day- June 7th... Film Great James Ivory

When asked for my favorite film I always answer with1985’s A Room With A View, although it is not quite true. The famous Merchant/Ivory film is in a 10 way tie with other much loved films, but I name this film based on the E. M. Forster novel,  because of the time & place that I saw it & because it eventually led me to the trip of a lifetime, 3 weeks in Italy in 1991.

A Room With A View was nominated for 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture & Best Director, & won 3, for Adapted Screenplay from Forster’s novel, Best Costumes & Best Production Design. A Room With A View was also voted Best Film of the year by the Critic’s Circle Film Section of Great Britain, the British Academy of Film & Television Arts, the National Board of Review in the United States & in Italy, where the film won the Donatello Prize for Best Foreign Language Picture & Best Director for James Ivory.

James Francis Ivory is known for his work in a long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions formed in 1961, along with Indian-born producer Ismail Merchant & screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Their films won 6 Academy Awards. Ismail Merchant was also Ivory's longtime partner in life. Their professional & romantic partnership lasted until Merchant's death.

Oregon’s own Ivory studied at the University of Oregon, majoring in Architecture & Fine Arts & University of Southern California Film School. He wrote, photographed, & produced Venice: Theme & Variations, a 30 minute documentary thesis film for his degree at USC. The film was named by The NY Times as one of the 10 best non-theatrical films of 1957.

Merchant Ivory productions were noted for their literary adaptations, restoring characterization, subtlety & period feeling to films in an era of explosions, aliens, cyborgs, & high-tech escapism. Their early movies were dismissed as yawners. A Room With A View,at a cost of $7 million, grossed $45 million, & left much anticipation for their next effort- Maurice.

Maurice is an impassioned gay love story. E.M. Forster, who was gay in a period when homosexuality was a crime in Great Britain, decreed that the book he wrote in 1914 be published only after he died. Forster passed away in 1970.

Forster's literary executors tried to steer Merchant Ivory toward the author's works. They found it harder than usual to find investors. Collaborator- Jhabvala declined to write the screenplay. Ivory co-wrote the script with Kit Hesketh-Harvey, 30, an actor & writer who graduated from Cambridge, where much of Maurice takes place. Just before shooting began that year, Julian Sands, who had co-starred in A Room With A View, withdrew from the title role claiming personal reasons. Ivory was warned that a salute to homosexual passion during the AIDS crisis was hardly exemplary timing.

Merchant & Ivory stood firm. The R-rated film depicts men courting, kissing & making love.

Ivory: "It would have be wrong to turn our faces from the homosexual community. We wanted the audience to root for a happy ending for the film's male lovers. People should be saying, 'I know what's in their hearts, I can feel for them.' Although the book was written over 90 years ago, it's completely relevant to today. The laws may have changed regarding homosexuality, but people's feelings—the dismay, panic & compromises they endure—remain the same."

In 1987, Maurice received a Silver Lion Award for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival as well as Best Film Score for Richard Robbins & Best Actor Awards for co-stars James Wilby & Hugh Grant.

They are the most impressive, impassioned, inspired & influential gay partnership in film history.  The films of Merchant Ivory will always be noted as visually sumptuous, well-acted period pieces based on literary works, produced on tiny budgets. The couple & their work were so closely intertwined that many assumed that "Merchant Ivory" was the name of one individual. Associated in with British literary & cultural traditions, their professional & personal relationship actually brought together diverse elements of American & Indian culture.

Other Merchant Ivory works based on gay literary sources include their adaptations of Forster's Howards End, Carson McCullers's The Ballad of the Sad Café, & Henry James's The Golden Bowl .

Ivory had no problem gathering A-list actors willing to work for scale. Actors associated with films directed by Ivory: all of those darn Redgraves, Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Sam Waterston, Alan Bates, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench,  Bernadette Peters, Christopher Reeve, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward,  Anne Baxter, Stanley Tucci,  Helena Bonham Carter, Daniel Day-Lewis,  Julie Christie, Ralph Fiennes, Nick Nolte, Natasha Richardson, Leslie Caron, & my past lover- Jeremy Northam.

Ivory & Merchant circa 1970

In 2005, Merchant died from a bleeding ulcer, after a short illness. Ivory's latest film, 2010’s The City of Your Final Destination, is the first he has made on his own.

Ivory: "But Ismail was very much there to plan it, he bought the rights to the book & we went down to Argentina together to scout the location. We then went to China & made The White Countess &, when we returned to London, that was when he died. I had to finish The White Countess without him & – how can I put this? – it took me some time to recover."

Ivory continues to work in film & lives in the 3 houses, on 3 continents that inspired his work as partners in film & life with Merchant. His films include:

 The Householder

Shakespeare Wallah

The Guru

Bombay Talkie

Savages  

Autobiography of a Princess

The Wild Party

Hullabaloo Over Georgie & Bonnie's Pictures

Roseland

The Europeans

Jane Austen in Manhattan

Quartet

Heat & Dust

The Bostonians

A Room with a View

Maurice

Slaves of New York

Mr. & Mrs. Bridge

Howards End

The Remains of the Day

Jefferson in Paris

Surviving Picasso

A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries

The Golden Bowl

Le Divorce

The White Countess

The City of Your Final Destination (based on openly gay Peter Cameron’s novel)

Born On This Day- May 29th... Film Actor Helmet Berger

It sounds like a weekend at Post Apocalyptic Bohemia: anguished souls, sinister villains & twisted Nazis, but I am actually considering Helmut Berger on his Birthday.

Helmut Beger by Helmut Newton 1970

In 1964, Helmut Berger met Italian director Luciano Visconti, who would become his partner in life. Visconti gave him his first acting role & he gained international fame in Visconti's from 1969- The Damned, a movie that fascinated me for its depravity when I was 15 years old. In this film, Berger mimics the role of Lola, as played by Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel . In the equally twisted role of King Luwig II of Bavaria in Visconti's Ludwig, Berger reached the apex of his acting career: he portrays the monarch from youth, to his dissolute final years, & creates a lunatic lord of decay drawn from his own weaknesses & depths.

Visconti introduced Berger to musicians, models &international artists: Rudolf Nureyev, Maria Calla, Leonard Bernstein & Mick Jagger. Berger had an affair with Nureyev, but didn’t appreciate the dancer’s passion for garlic & vodka. He claims one time encounter withJagger. At least I went twice with the Rolling Stones singer.

Visconti's death in 1976 drove Berger into deep despair & financial collapse. Visconti's will, in which Berger was to be heir, could not be found. The former lover of Visconti, Franco Zeffirelli, berated Berger publicly, accusing him of exploiting his mentor. Berger attempted suicide on the first anniversary of Visconti's death, & fell into alcohol & drug addiction. In his 1988 memoir- Ich, he refers to his relationship with Visconti as a marriage &  claims to be the director's widow.

Berger worked in B-movies & a few high profile films like Ash Wednesday in 1973 with Elizabeth Taylor. He also worked in TV, including the role of Peter De Vilbis on Post Apocalyptic Bohemian favorite- Dynasty. Since Visconti's death no director has been able to bring Berger's considerable talents to the screen again.

I was very drawn to Helmut Berger in the 1970s. I swooned at photos of him in After Dark magazine & in fashion layouts. Check out his work in Dorian Gray, a warped Italian version of the Oscar Wilde tale, set in sexually loose 1970’s London. Berger turns 67 today. He continues to work in film.

Berger Today

Born On This Day- May 29th... Rupert James Hector Everett

We were already big fans of his good looks & his talent. The Husband waited on Rupert Everett, in town for the Seattle International Film Festival showing of Another Country, at the then famous gay dining spot- The Ritz Café on Capitol Hill is Seattle. The Husband came home with the sordid tale of Everett’s bad behavior, culminating in his passing out, face first into a plate of food. I somehow loved the actor even more.

At 15 years old, Rupert Everett ran away from boarding school & went to London to become an actor. He starred opposite Kenneth Brannagh in the play Another Country when he was 23. He did the film version, based on the life of the  gay spy Guy Burgess, with Colin Firth when he was 25. He came out when he was 29 & the offers dried up. He gave interesting & deft performances in Pret-a-Porter & The Madness of King George, but when he starred opposite Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding, the industry was abuzz with the idea of the “gay best friend” as an asset for a story line. It was unique to have a gay character who is happily partnered, not a victim, not dying, or not a sissy. He carried the film with the charm of Cary Grant.

That charm followed with roles as gay Christopher Marlowe in Shakespeare in Love, An Ideal Husband, Inspector Gadget, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Next Best Thing, The Importance of Being Earnest, & the overlooked- Stage Beauty. He is the voice of Prince Charming in the money making Shrek franchise, disproving his own theory that out actors can’t get work.

Everett has written 2 novels & a memoir, in which he included the fact that for a time he was a rent boy. I very much enjoyed reading Rupert's memoir- Red Carpets & Other Banana Skins.  He names names, something I admire in a memoir. He is honest, hugely funny & deeply wise about human nature, particularly his own. His beautiful face, his lovely manners, all his attractive qualities seemed worth the cash to me.

Rupert Everett has been urging gay stars not to come out & to keep their sexuality a secret as it could end their film career. He came out as gay 25 years ago & admitted that since then, he has been given only supporting roles.

Everett is now suggesting that aspiring actors stay in the closet as it could harm their career: “It's not that advisable to be honest. It's not very easy, &, honestly, I would not advise any actor necessarily, if he was really thinking of his career, to come out... The fact is that you could not be, & still cannot be, a 25 year old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business. It just doesn't work & you're going to hit a brick wall at some point. You're going to manage to make it roll for a certain amount of time, but at the first sign of failure, they'll cut you right off. I'm sick of saying: ‘Yes, it's probably my own fault.’ Because I've always tried to make it work & when it stops working somewhere, I try to make it work somewhere else. But the fact of the matter is, & I don't care who disagrees, it doesn't work if you're gay.”

Everett added that he does believe he is happier than those other major stars who are keeping their sexuality a secret: “I think, all in all, I'm probably much happier than they are. I may not be as rich or successful, but at least I'm vaguely free to be myself.”

John Schlesinger was a great director, responsible for Midnight Cowboy & Sunday, Bloody Sunday, ground breaking gay themed films. But, I think The Next Best Thing is one of the worst movies I have ever had to sit through. Drek, not Shrek. I stayed with it for Mr. Everett.

Everett turns 52 years old today & is looking his age. I would still do him. but then like Everett, I can be very shallow.

Alla Nazimova Was Born On This Day- May 22nd

 

She wasn’t in therapy, didn’t wear a fanny pack, had never sang along with the Indigo Girls & she didn’t play on a softball league, but Alla Nazimova was one luscious lesbian.

Nazimova was born Miriam Edez Adelaida Leventon, in the Ukraine, on this day in 1879. She studied with Stanslavski at the Moscow Arts Theatre. Nazimova was a mjor star in Moscow, Berlin & London by the time she arrived in NYC in 1905. She became an acclaimed actress & the toast of Broadway in the first deacde of the 20^th Century with success performing the works of Chekov, Turgenev & Ibsen. 

In 1918, Nazimova began producing, writing, & starring in films of her stage triumphs. Her film adaptations, her own film making techniques, & her acting style were considered daring at the time. 

In 1920s Hollywood, she counted as her many lovers: Patsy Ruth Miller, Anna Mae Wong, both of Rudolph Valentino's wives- Jean Acker & Natacha Rambova, Eva Le Gallienne, director- Dorothy Azner, & writer- Mercedes de Acosta. She coined the term "sewing circle" as code for her lesbian group of gal pals.  

Her private lifestyle was the topic of widespread rumors of decadent & debauched parties at her mansion on Sunset Boulevard, in West Hollywood known as The Garden of Allah. The Moorish palace was built in 1919. 

In 1927, Nazimova converted her estate into a 3.5 acre semi tropical trysting resort. She retained a private apartment upstairs in her former mansion, with the bottom story converted into a café & bar. The property became a complicated colorful collection of Spanish style bungalows & detached apartments, 25 villas were constructed around the pool, designed with drama & dash; the pool was shaped like the Black Sea.

The Garden Of Allah went bankrupt within a year & was bought by a developer who raised the rent. Nazimova stayed & among those who chose to live there: Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Clara Bow, Buster Keaton, Ramon Navarro, Harpo Marx, Ava Gardner, Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Ernest Hemingway, Lillian Hellman, Joe E. Lewis, Artie Shaw, Marlene Dietrich, George Kaufman, F Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Benchley & Laurence Olivier.  

 
Sham marriages, fights, feuds, egos, liquor during Prohibition, spoiled celebrities, recreational sex, drugs, drunken rages, loach liaisons, writer’s block, orgies, money problems, sudden changes of plans, the Garden Of Allah was a true Post Apocalyptic Bohemia. 

At the corner of Sunset & Crescent Heights, The Garden Of Allah is now a strip mall. The Joni Michell Song- Big Yellow Taxi is about the destruction of the site. Nazimova died in 1945, at the age of 66. She is buried at Forest Lawn.

If you should find yourself in LA & you desire the expert attention of a true insider, I recommend my blogger friend Felix & his World Class Tour Of Hollywood... take his tour!